I have no Idea how to tell my family i'm an athiest

So I'm 14 and was (am) raised as a lutheran. About 2 years ago I realized that it's all a bunch of crap, and i've been reading around the internet about atheism. I now think of myself as an atheist, but I don't know how to tell my parents. I'm currently going through confirmation, which is really ironic that I'm going to have to "confirm" my "belief." I don't know if I should wait until after I'm "confirmed", or just suck it up and come out now. I still have about 1 year until I'm done with confirmation. Also, my mom's friend's family is very religious, and we see them a lot and I don't know what they'd think if I came out. I know my parents aren't super serious about religion, but they make me go to confirmation every wednesday because "they believe having a strong faith is important." When I do come out and tell them, I don't even know how I would bring it up, or what I would say. It's not like I can just go up and say, "Hey guys guess what turns out I'm an athiest!" I obviously need some help here with this.

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Much as I honestly can sympathize with you about your plight with your parents I’m more inclined to actually side with your parents (Okay, yes, I know you haven’t told them yet. But bear with me for a minute and I’ll tell you why).

Your parents have long been vested in having you become a “Confirmed Lutheran” for many reasons. The primary ones are for peace of mind that they’ve “done the right thing according to their beliefs” where raising you is concerned, also they’re probably worried about keeping up appearances within the Lutheran community. But I might also caution you that telling them that you’re an Atheist can oftentimes be a stinging insult to one’s parents. Because religiously minded people are oftentimes incapable of seeing the idea of “non-secularism” as anything other than pure evil or Satan worship.

Yes, I agree with Mayur in that “it only reflects your intellectual capabilities and the rationality of your mind” but religious people could care less about an individual’s mind when it comes to their local flavor of God. It really doesn’t matter how intellectually rational you are when you take into account that religion doesn’t concern itself with “rationalities”. I mean look at all the people who are church goers in this country, how many of them do you think are religious for “rational” reasons? In fact can you honestly give even one scientifically rational reason for believing in God in the first place?

If anything I would probably wait until you were much older before mentioning that you’re an Atheist (if ever). As it is I announced to my family my lack of secularism near the end of this last year, and only a few weeks ago they pretty much labeled me “sick” and “twisted” and basically disowned me. And here I’m in my late 40’s. I just shudder to think what would have happened if I had told them while I was still living under their roof.

You struggle reminds me of my youth. I was raised Catholic and like you I had to go through confirmation (not to mention all the other catholic sacraments including communion and confession. That last one is particularly creepy). My mother was and still is very religious. I told both her and my dad I didn't believe and i wanted to scrub the whole thing. My parents did a masterful job of applying both guilt and greed (grandma and family give you gifts at these ridiculous rituals) to persuade me to recite their incantations to their little imaginary friends. Unfortunately, at age 14 you are still rather beholden to your parents and you do owe them proper respect.

My advice is for you to honestly tell your parents you are an Atheist (it's OK to use the word Atheist. It's not a dirty word) not a Lutheran and that going through with the confirmation would be hypocritical. If they insist, well as I said you still owe them respect but buck up, 18 is just around the corner.

Gunnar, I had the same type of experience. I was being raised Jewish, and at the age of 12 I was for sure an atheist, and you are the first person I've met who was the same. At age 13 I had to get Bar-Mitzvahed, which is essentially "confirmation" for Jews. I went through with it, mostly because my parents told me my grandparents would flip out and I didn't want to hurt granny and grandpa! My grandparents were Conservative Jews, which means they were pretty serious about Judaism (I guess like born-again Christians, I don't know what your experiences growing up Christian were like). But that's the point, the common theme here is that they are both fundamentally wrong and shouldn't be adhered to. I am telling you that you should tell your parents. I know its the crazy, my whole life is going to change thing to do, but you will feel so much stronger and better about yourself if you can make the moral stands now, and when you come across those hard decisions again later in life (you will), you will know you can do the right and good thing because you have done it before and you have always done it. You have a unique opportunity to show how much more noble, how much more heroic, how much more virtuous we atheists can be when faced with the reality of the situation, because when it comes down to it, the only difference between atheists and the religious are that we are not afraid to look at how the world is, and who we are as people and individuals, and not afraid to take a risk to ourselves if it means helping to make this world (and no other, imaginary worlds) a better place.

I wish I had the opportunity you have. If I knew then what I know now, I would do so very many things different. And in nearly every case it is because I had some earlier failing which sapped my strength for the next fight. Start taking your first great leaps now, and you may turn out to be a truly great person in the future. You will at least be able to say that you stood up for what you knew was right, and those kinds of experiences are what makes life really good. Any other pleasure only fulfills you for the moments, but these fill you up and make you happy about yourself for your whole life.

You are in the position of having people say that you are doing them some harm. But you are also in the position of doing them some actual good. Since you know you are not harming them in actuality, you have the opportunity to practise how to handle these types of situations for the future. Once you get used to dealing with how people will react to your presence the way you want to be with them, the more comfortable you will be with yourself. If you get people used to your presence without noticing what it means to you, you will get too caught up in trying to accomodate yourself around others, rather than being capable of getting them to try to accomodate you. This is the essence of affecting good in the world. The old saying goes, "evil only succeeds where good men do nothing". Do something with your life!

And believe me, if something happens to you everyone here will find out and do everything possible to protect you from any kind of serious threat, just so you know.

It seems to me that you have thought this through, enough to join an Athiest forum- which many adults that are nonthiests would not go so far as to do. And your parents seem fairly level headed as well. I'm 26 with much less leveled parents and extended family from Austria and Peru that are extremely catholic. I began having these same conversations with my family around 14, and to this day it is an ongoing debate. However, honesty really is the best policy in any situation I believe. And it seems disrespectful to the Christian faith to be "confirmined" into it if you truly believe you do not share that belief. I have never met you and obviously know little about you, but I take you and your problem seriously because of how far you have gone in your search to find like minded individuals and how well you articulate your fears. I would hope that if you approach your parents the same way you have us their reaction would be similar to mine. Perhaps writing your feelings or even showing them these posts would be an easier way to start a dialog with them. Good Luck!

I was a couple years older than you when my parents started to realize I was asking questions that showed a lack of faith. >.> It upset them a lot. But really, all you can do is let them get used to it over time. As years pass and your "phase" doesn't end, they start accepting it whether or not they want to.

I'm 24 now, and my parents still hate when I mention something that reminds them I won't be in heaven with them when I die. >.> Gotta love that.